I’m certainly not the only one to talk about these issues. Tor.com did a post just last week: Hey Everyone – Stop Taking This Picture. As usually happens in these discussions, some people responded with, “What about romance covers?” and “Men are objectified too, you know!”

Well, sure. Men can absolutely be objectified too. But is it the same kind of objectification? Are we contorted into similarly painful, impractical, and improbable positions? Is the posing of men in book covers really equivalent to the posing of women?

There was, of course, only one way to find out…

Given the number of books out there, you can find a cover to “prove” just about any point. I tried to pick representative examples of romance, paranormal/genre romance, and Conan covers for this post. These covers are all from larger publishers, and with the exception of the Conans, I believe they’re all from relatively recent releases.

I was a bit surprised to see that men do get the head-chopped-off treatment fairly often, as you can see below, though I don’t know that it’s as common as it is with women.

When I tried my first female pose back in January, the first thing I noticed was pain as my muscles protested what I was trying to do to them. By contrast, my first pose here was a piece of cake. While I don’t typically stand around all day with my shirt unbuttoned, the pose above felt relaxed and fairly natural.

The second pose was almost as easy.

Once again, we’ve got a nicely chiseled body (at least on the right), but aside from having to put my right arm back a little further than I wanted, it was a pretty natural pose.

Off-topic, am I the only one who looks at that dude and thinks his belly button is fleeing up his torso?

I did find a book cover that came close to the pose they were talking about in the Tor.com post.

A few thoughts about this one. First off, as noted in the image, if I was a female I’d be expected to keep my butt on display while twisting my spine enough to thrust my breasts at the viewer as well. As a guy, I can just stand there and pretend to look muscular. Also, most of the time when I see women posed like this, the butt and breasts are highlighted. If you look at the cover for Magic Unchained, his butt is mostly in shadow, with text further obscuring it.

Let’s move into “true” romance territory and see what happens…

First of all, I went to all that trouble to don a Snoopy tie, and you can barely even tell! Sigh. And for those thinking, “Wait, didn’t Jim say he doesn’t own a suit?” I don’t. That’s my karate gi.

Anyway, I put this one up because I found a surprising number of covers with fully dressed men. I guess men are allowed to be attractive with their clothes on.

In this case, you’ve got the man holding on to his woman (given his stance and posture, the possessive is intentional), slipping off her dress. The dynamic here is pretty clear, yes?

But let’s get back to the shirtless dudes!

Okay, so this time the woman is fully dressed and the man is topless. But he’s still very much the dominant one, holding his woman to keep her from toppling over backward.

Is anyone else starting to see a pattern here? Men on covers show off the abs, pecs, and arms, but always in a position where they appear powerful.

I couldn’t do romance without at least one classic Fabio cover.

Same thing. Both the man and the woman are showing skin, but the man is the one in control. He’s powerful; she’s helpless in his arms.

I also decided to try a few old-school Conan novels, as these are also mentioned from time to time as examples of objectification of men.

Showing off the body, yes. But in a powerful, I’m-gonna-kick-your-ass-and-feast-on-your-pancreas kind of way. There is a little contortion going on here, trying to show off those pecs, but it’s nowhere near the level of twisting I remember from my female cover poses.

ETA: I can’t believe I missed the, um, “overcompensatory” positioning of Conan’s sword in this one. Teenage me is so disappointed.

This was the first pose that caused some pain, and I didn’t get it quite right. (Though the pain helped me with my barbarian grimace.) I’m still not sure what’s going on with his waist and hips there. But the distortion you get with Conan is matched by the woman clinging to his arm, who is bulging in bad-comic-book proportions as she waits for her man to protect her. I would have tried to do her pose as well, but I suspect doing so would have put me in the hospital.

I did a better job with this next one, though.

As usual, we’ve got the man in an action pose, ready to go after a random bad guy who set his own hand on fire. (Must be a goblin wizard.) Then you have the woman, pretty much equally naked, but helpless and bent to emphasize the butt. Even lying on the floor, this was one of the more painful poses of the photoshoot, in part because I couldn’t use my left hand to support myself, but I had to keep both my torso and butt directed upward..

In Conclusion

Men on book covers are indeed posed shirtless in ways that show off their musculature. However…

Male poses do not generally emphasize sexuality at the expense of all other considerations.

Male poses do emphasize the character’s power and strength in a way many (most?) female cover poses don’t.

When posed with a woman, the man will usually be in the dominant, more powerful posture.

Male poses do not generally require a visit to the chiropractor afterward.

See also ocelott’s post comparing male and female poses. She comes to pretty much the same conclusions as I did.

So are men objectified and sexualized on book covers? Sometimes, sure … but not in the same way, and not, I think, to the same extent. I’ll admit that going through these poses made me feel like I should spend the rest of the day doing push-ups and sit-ups. But overall, to suggest that the posing of men on covers is anywhere near as problematic as the posing of women seems, well, ignorant and wrong.

As before, thank you to my wife Amy for helping me with the poses and taking the pictures.

Awesome! I think you make fair points here. I do think that there are a goodly chunk of covers objectifying men, but your distinctions between the way men and women are objectified are really important ones.

I’m not sure about the proportions of male head-choppy to full-headed covers vs. female ones, but I detest them all. I mean, could we at least PRETEND that we were interested in more than a piece of meat?

Also, THANK YOU for noting the terrifying migratory belly button on Mr. Afterglow there. It freaked me out and I was comforted to know I was not alone in noticing. Even Mr. Wanted-Dead-or-Alive has a somewhat higher than normal belly button, and it looks to be a good 3 inches lower than Mr. Afterglow. Maybe these fellows are descendants of Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque and they have extra vertebrae in the lower back??

Those do look rather less painful and contorted than the “female” poses — although it took seeing a man twisting that way to realize just how contorted the “female” poses were.
Your photoshop skillz, I salute them.

AnnMarie TApr 23, 2012 @ 13:18:57

Thank you for this post … it’s my first read of the day and I laughed so much that I am certain the rest of the day will be better for it. Great job on the poses!

[…] he just did another shoot, this time addressing the question of whether men on romance covers and ol… are similarly objectified. The conclusions are about what I would have expected, but the photos, as […]

MegApr 23, 2012 @ 13:45:52

Really fun and interesting examination!
I did have something to throw on the fire though: I’m an out-of-shape, pushing-40 woman, and I was pretty surprised to find, it was pretty easy for me to imitate those silly female postures, where the hiney and chest are both showing. It is also the classic pose of presenting for mating availability in many species, so it figures it would be the commonly alluring pose in humans.

The other thing I mused on, while enjoying reading this and agreeing heartily with lots of it, was that the Frank Frazetta cover art is extremely erotic precisely because it exaggerates the polarity between ideals of male and female erotic display, in juxtaposition. No, real men and real women don’t look like that, and can’t generally comfortably pose like many of his prints, any more than real cheese tastes like or looks like the neon-orange extreme flavors found in the dust in the bottom of the bag of cheesy puffs…but people love it the more, because of the extreme experience it provides.

That said, a woman ought to be able to speak and be listened to by people of both genders, without showing cleavage in order to get their attention first, but experiments show repeatedly that women attempting to get signatures on a petition, get passed by much less often if they have cleavage or some other erotic symbol to gain attention first, which is a great pity.

We are all primal beings and need not be ashamed of it, but I would hate to be unable to land a job, make a point in conversation, or be taken seriously as an intelligent being, without first presenting myself as an object of erotic interest.

We’ve gone too far in that direction already, with many women actively seeking their own objectification as a form of what they consider empowerment, because they feel if they can’t beat it, may as well join it to reap some momentary benefit.

I really enjoyed reading and seeing this, and had a good laugh with you on many points. Kudos for taking the time and making some points that need talking about. The belly button one had me stumped as to what the possible motivation could be, from an erotic viewpoint. My only guess is, by placing it so high, they maximize the impact of his exposed below-navel area, to more clearly suggest how close his pubes are to the edge of his jeans?

I loved your captions, and for what it’s worth, the captured energy between you and the bear were far more believable than some of the covers you were lampooning!

MegApr 23, 2012 @ 13:47:45

correction: showing both rear and full chest is not the classic “presenting” pose for females indicating mating readiness to a male. Showing rear and glancing back at the male with rear still presented, however, is. That’s what I meant.

BarbaraApr 23, 2012 @ 13:58:18

I saw your “Posing Like a Man” on a Friend’s Facebook feed and checked it out, and then also checked out your “Striking a Pose (Women and Fantasy Covers)” and thoroughly enjoyed your analysis and humor. Thanks for making my Monday better!

I called my 40’s the decade of being invisible. It is so eye-opening to find that the male eyes that once followed you, now skip past you without even registering. This isn’t just the young guys, but the older guys as well.

It’s official. I love the boots with the jean shorts. You totally rocked that look 😛

Tammy J. PalmerApr 23, 2012 @ 22:05:07

My favorite example of overdone male bodies is in the movie Three Hundred. I kept imagining a woman in a white coat tearing off strips of the warriors chest hair while they gritted their teeth, refusing to scream. Of course the movie had a strong fantasy element. Which is the point I guess. We want to imagine ourselves as the heroines, and so why not be flexible, along with sexy, and even, yes, I’ll say it, submissive. It’s all a part of the fantasy.

I have recently gone back to teaching Intro to Sociology after 10 years off to raise two girls. I just finished up my lectures on Sex and Gender and Inequality when I read this. I was wondering, if in conjunction with Still Killing Us Softly 4, I might have your permission to use this and your post on female urban fantasy poses as reads in my class next semester.

Anyways, overnight I’ve been thinking about this, and I do think the top few’faceless’ images of men are actually much worse than the ‘here’s my butt’ images of women. They guy’s got no face! There’s no more basic way to deprive someone of their personhood than removing their face. That’s why those Soryama robot-women pictures are so creepy.

While the “here’s my butt” picture really is rather bad, portraying the woman as… well, literally T&A, she still has a face, she can still say “Hey, I’m up here”. The men in the top post can’t, they are just bodies.

But, as I said in that previous post (wherever I wrote it, I wonder if I typed it into some other website) romance does have some claim to be *about* hot bodies, urban fantasy and spec-fic in general less so. So in some ways these covers are more ‘excusable’ on romance books.

I have to say, though, woman are also usually deprived from faces on many mediums. :/
Killing us Softly shows a bunch of those pictures! x.x

Yet, I agree. Although woman are objetified all the time, it does not make man objetification ok. No objetification is ok, since it’s deshumanizing.
I think sexy pictures shouldn’t be banned, they can be awesome, but I like them better when they don’t mean you are just that, just sex, not a person, nothing else.

And saying someone is just their bodies and that their face, their expressions do not matter is horrible. :/

[…] I really don’t get making a film out of that book. Is it going to be X-Rated? Because, from what I hear, the smut is really the only thing that keeps the plot humming along. Speaking of trashy reads, check out this adorable post of an average dude mimicking Romance Novel poses. (Jim Hines) […]

geekchick77Apr 24, 2012 @ 14:40:57

You, sir, are fantastic. Your post on posting like a woman made me laugh, and this one made me laugh even harder.

TeTRApr 24, 2012 @ 14:54:18

In a way, men are also not as easily sexually objectified as women, physically.
Studies have shown that the main 4 sexually attractive bodyparts in the world are breasts, penis, butt and feet. Everything else is way far behind. I dont recall if butt is only really the female butt or not.

The breasts and butt are classified as something like “secondary” sexual characteristics, and are not as taboo to display as a penis or vagina. So, the main “sexually popular” physical attribute that men have is not really up for being shown(assuming that male butts are seen as attractive as female butts. I personally dont find them such, especially compared to the male chest, but that’s just me) while female breasts and ass are much more acceptably displayed since they are secondary sexual characteristics as opposed to primary sexual characteristics, aka genitalia.

So, there’s some limitations via the differences between men and women’s bodies and the most popular sexual fetishes to appeal to, which can *partially* explain the differences in imagery.

TeTRApr 24, 2012 @ 14:55:28

Err, minor correction, “assuming that male butts AREN’T seen as attractive”. Need to check that study again. One of the authors had a rather Turkish sound name, if I recall..

Ms. EliseApr 24, 2012 @ 15:54:44

How men and women are objectified are definitely related, but I think it is very important to avoid comparing oppression like this. It pits those oppressed against each other in an unproductive fight that, in the end, only weakens progressive movements. Saying one version of objectification is “worse” or “the worst” or anything that implies other versions of objectification are less important does this, and implies that people should be focusing on the other, “worse” oppression and not the other one. I know this is rather simplistic – we can advocate against more than one oppression at a time – but I think it is important to avoid anything that could devolve into another round of “oppression olympics” where the only winners are the oppressors.

Yep. Minimed Paradigm. There are times when it’s annoying, but for me it’s worked so much better than when I was doing 5-6 shots/day to keep my blood sugar under control.

The cellphone holster I use for it came along after I broke two of Minimed’s plastic holsters in less than a month, courtesy of karate. The cellphone case has just enough give to it that it’s held up a lot better.

DanApr 24, 2012 @ 16:18:26

I thought the holster looked a little large. Maybe the Minimed 508 size.

I definitely broke a few of the plastic Minimed clips roughhousing but recently switched to the One Touch Ping which has a one piece, all-metal clip on it which seems a little more reliable (but we’ll see once I get out hiking again).

TeTR – well, there’s plenty of opportunity for feet too, then. And yes, male butts are sexy if you ask the right people 🙂

TeTRApr 24, 2012 @ 17:26:29

That’s true. Those statistics were based on the world, btw. Maybe Americans dont see feet sexually nearly as much as other countries? I personally dont see them that way but I know a few people who do..in Britain. Or maybe the people who make these dont realize how popular feet are and so dont go for that? I dunno. Just wondering out loud.

Jeff LinderApr 24, 2012 @ 17:51:11

It could be as simple as realistic feet are one of the hardest body parts to draw 🙂

CthandhsApr 24, 2012 @ 18:26:45

Awesome post! This and your previous post gives me hope that by recognizing (and laughing at) this kind of objectification, we can stop it. Also, I’m tickled to see covers from a couple of my dad’s books. Guess it’s a small internet after all.

[…] C.Hines, my HERO. His follow-up post about posing like male heroes is also worth reading, if not quite as photolicious. Share […]

LianneApr 24, 2012 @ 20:19:22

Love it!

However, your pose for Conan the Savage needed more back arch to thrust those mighty pecs into clearer relief.

(Now, if you wanted to break your back, you need to try the standard female comic book heroine poses. Ouch! Of course, you would also need to remove a bunch of internal organs to get the right waist to hip measurements)

[…] his back out posing like women on book covers, has recovered enough to try it again, this time posing like men on book covers. * Living in the spotlight means you automatically smile for the camera, even when it’s a […]

[…] his back out posing like women on book covers, has recovered enough to try it again, this time posing like men on book covers. * Living in the spotlight means you automatically smile for the camera, even when it’s a […]

[…] his back out posing like women on book covers, has recovered enough to try it again, this time posing like men on book covers. * Living in the spotlight means you automatically smile for the camera, even when it’s a […]

[…] his back out posing like women on book covers, has recovered enough to try it again, this time posing like men on book covers. * Living in the spotlight means you automatically smile for the camera, even when it’s a […]

[…] at Tor.com, he did it again. However, this time, he’s not posing like women on UF covers, but he’s striking the male pose.Lauren Dane has posted the back cover copy for her third Delicious novel, Lush, which will feature […]

I’m here to award you the coveted (someday) Chuck Heston Guns in Art award for being the only person in your photo essay posing with their finger OFF the trigger of a gun. Sure, it’s a Nerf, but it’s the principal of the thing. Those of us who own and use firearms grow ever wearier of images of people in studly warrior poses with their finger right on the trigger. It just screams: I learned gun handling from watching TV and bad action films! So: thank you.

ShriekyApr 25, 2012 @ 14:26:58

Still hot, man. You’re my current author crush. My last two were Terry Pratchett and Gail Simone, so you’re in pretty prestigious company.

What a riot! Thoroughly enjoyed your post. Now I’m going to have to go back and find the urban fantasy one.

SharonApr 25, 2012 @ 15:19:59

OK. After seeing this I am forced to read your books even though I have yet to get into fantasy. Anyone with your sense of humor should write great reads. Thanks to Cherry Adair for posting a link to your blog.

Because these things don’t fit into the fantasies of a lot of women? It’s nice that 90%+ of the stuff out there meets your personal tastes, but there are many of us who have different tastes and would like to see more stuff that speaks to us. I don’t read fantasy so that the author/illustrator can remind me of one of the most obnoxious problems in my real life, that as a woman I’m societally expected to be (and to want to be) a submissive sexbot. My fantasy world is one where it’s a given that men and women have equal claims to power, autonomy, and active desire. Unfortunately that seems to be almost as rare in fiction as it is in real life.

MaggieApr 25, 2012 @ 21:03:21

Maybe you should post your source re: the “studies”, especially since your other reply makes it sound like you’re talking about just one. Wildman et al (1976) had women rank their sexual preference for the male chest, penis, legs, and butt — penis came in last place. There aren’t many studies on what women find attractive in men, but I thought it was pretty well-accepted that secondary sex characteristics are important for male sexual attractiveness. Personal experience/past discussions suggest that a lot of women find a nice male butt, head of hair, pair of shoulders, chest, or muscular forearm very sexy. If women were that into dicks for the sake of dicks, you’d see a much wider female audience for dick pics. (From what I’ve seen, most women, even those who thoroughly enjoy porn, aren’t really into that. That’s not to say that the male penis can’t be sexy, but that there are lots of other sexy parts — a dick pic is like having a few slices of pepperoni without any pizza underneath.)

[…] cucumber soda with a shot and a half of Ten Cane rum, torn-up mint, and a splash of Key Lime juice; Jim Hines posing like a man; figuring out that crazy is sometimes code for really awesome; and clarifications of […]

[…] like women on Urban Fantasy book covers. Since we recorded this, he’s also posted a series of male Urban Fantasy book cover poses. Both are well worth a look! *Tansy’s blog post with pictures of the unfortunate portrayal of […]

[…] – Jim C. Hines once again takes on UF cover poses, this time for the guys […]

JenniferApr 27, 2012 @ 22:24:13

I used to work at a large chain bookstore (sniffle, miss it!) and I did the mass market displays of recent and popular releases. I used to do whole rows of covers of ab-eriffic men cut off at the nose (who needs his face, when you’ve got abs of adamantium?) on my displays, usually 10 books wide, and I could eke out two rows if I really tried.

I always thought romance novels were funny, and often when I was shelving in the morning, if you heard a muffled snort-giggle from that section it was me.

Thanks for the pair of posts! My book nerd friends will get a kick out of it!